How Do I Explain McKenna?

This past fall McKenna was part of the color guard, the flag waving corps that accompanies the marching band at halftimes of games and at contests. She was a natural at tossing and catching the flag, improving and impressing with every practice.
For the first home game, we had arrived early with her, so they and the band could go over last minute instructions and get in the stands before most of the crowd showed up. I was on the track in front of the stands talking with another band parent before our night of helping them set up their halftime show when TJ, the color guard instructor, came up to me and said, “Mr. Massey, can I ask you a question?”
Now, TJ is a big black man, very funny but demanding with the guard, so I thought it a wise choice to give him my full attention.

“Yes sir?,” I said.

“Can you explain that to me?,” he asked, and pointed into the stands where the guard was.

As I looked, I saw all but one of them were sitting down, organizing their stuff, talking with each other, looking around the field, listening to their ipods…just passing time. The one who wasn’t sitting was…McKenna. She was standing about two or three rows up into the group, facing right, and doing the running man dance.

There wasn’t any music playing.

She was dancing alone.

She didn’t care.

Explain that? Explain to someone, who has only known my daughter for a few months and really only from a few hours a day of doing flag throwing drills, what has to be going through her head at that moment?
I might as well explain the pull of the ocean toward the moon that causes the tides to come in and out, the cocooning and emerging process of butterflies, the instinctual return of salmon to their birthing place to spawn.

How do I explain this girl who, around age 5, was in a deep, philosophical argument with her older brother in the car one day regarding who farted. She had smelled the offending odor, and mentioned it, but of course Reese shot back with the tried and true, ‘You smelt it, you dealt it!’ McKenna would have none of that, as she emphatically replied, ‘No, I didn’t!’ Reese began repeating, ‘You smelt it, you dealt it! You smelt it, you dealt it!’, followed by her ever louder responses, ‘NO I DIDN’T!!’. Finally, in a desperate and bold verbal hail mary, McKenna retorted, ‘REESE, I SMELT IT BUT DIDN’T DEALT IT!!’

How do I communicate what I feel about the picture of the two year old she was at the time as she’s holding a flex-tube at the Omniplex in Oklahoma City and it’s shooting air in her face and her hair is standing up on end and she’s laughing and thinking this is the greatest thing in the world?

How do I explain where, or how, she and a friend came up with a new holiday…Turkey-Bacon Day’? They apparently decided that Turkey-Bacon needed to be celebrated and have instituted their own holiday for this healthy version of a breakfast staple. They put the announcement on Facebook, inviting others to join them in creating a festival atmosphere celebrating the genius of turkey-bacon. McKenna even made her own shirt wishing all who looked at her a ‘Happy Turkey-Bacon Day.’ They’ve even made a catch-phrase…’It’s goinkin’ (I guess a cross between gobble-gobble and oink)! And she doesn’t care what people think! A wonderful trait, but once again, how do I explain this?

How do I explain the young lady that loves to play with the neighborhood girls who come to our door to ask her to come outside and brighten their afternoon with her presence? Or likes to create bright, colorful drawings on any piece of paper she can find that expresses her delight with her friends or family…or a cow she made up who’s name is Tony?

How do I explain the thought process of this female?

Once, when she reached the end of her rope at finding, AGAIN, her younger brother’s underwear in the bathroom floor after he got out of the shower, she proceeded to tape it and a note to his door informing him that the next time she finds them there she would ‘HANG THEM IN THE TREE IN THE FRONT YARD!! Love, McKenna’! (She did follow through on that threat by the way…NOT a beautiful day in the neighborhood!). How do I begin to explain this?

How do I explain the girl that loves to give me hugs and kisses when we’re just hanging at the house…or wants to practice driving the car with me anywhere we can in anticipation of getting her permit (which I’M not quite ready for, btw!)…or wants to practice our wedding reception ‘daddy-daughter’ dance to Steven Curtis Chapman’s ‘I Danced With Cinderella’ at totally random moments? She’s a teenager who likes to spend time with her father? What brand of foolishness is she displaying here?

You want me to explain the girl that is so passionate about her friends that not long after having arguments or disagreements she’s on the phone or otherwise communicating with them, trying to work things out in order to get the relationship back to a happy state?

She is who she is because God has put it in her heart to be the free spirit, loud and proud, outlandish, marches-to-her-own-drummer type of girl that she is.

I looked at her in the stands that evening, smiled, then looked at TJ and shrugged my shoulders. “I dunno! You have to ask God, I guess. He made her that way.”
Which is just how I like it!